Poppytail Series

Autodesk Fusion 360 generates an error whenever I try to open it, the file for Poppytail 5 on Stencyl is corrupted and Stencyl only makes a .zip with two blank text files when I try to generate logs.

I have a recent back-up, luckily, but this may slow down my progress.

My most recent back-up is from last Saturday (I hadn't made any progress in those seven days), and I'm trying to test now. I hope the game works without becoming corrupted, but I'll still have the .STENCYL if anything goes wrong again.

Switched to my slow laptop and made some progress with a subtitle system and some little touches to make everything look a bit better. Hopefully the “demo” will be released soon. I know I said I would have it out by the end of April, but I WILL have it out by the end of May (maybe).

Have been working mostly on planning and graphics for TPT, but I have done a little bit of work on it and I’m nearly done the demo. I have also talked with JackAttackGames and he’s nearly ready to send me images of his 3D models so I can make the second chapter.

I’ve also showed this to other people who had never heard about the Poppytail series, and the initial reaction of most of them was “Is that Five Nights at Freddy’s?”

I’m not saying there aren’t similarities, but those make sense in the Poppytail series:

There are characters that kill you- A trait shared by every Poppytail game. This happens in nearly every game other than my Century Game and Easter Fun.

A rabbit exists- Although this character is not an Easter Bunny variant. Maybe it doesn’t help if I nicknamed Nursina “Bunny” for the sake of simplicity for those who know nothing about the series.

The game is a point-and-click- This is probably a big one that makes people think FNAF, but this is just part of the genre.

A recording plays at the beginning- Do I really need to explain why it shouldn’t play midway through the chapter or at the end?

”Vents”- AKA the tunnel system.

At least this game hasn’t been accused of being a rip-off of anything else (people thought it was either an Undertale fan game or a rip-off of Bendy and the Ink Machine because of the first game’s similar beginning plot).

I have been working on a Desktop game for a while and it's almost ready to release. It's called Poppytail.

The basic plotline is that a middle-aged man called Alex, a former programmer for Rosemary Games (which is basically the Poppytail universe's Nintendo) is invited via a letter to come back to their old building. After finding it abandoned and potentially renovated, the letter's sender and Alex's coworkers are seemingly missing. Also, the doors lock behind him and trapped in the building with him are cute-looking creatures who want to kill him. His only chance to survive is to run for his life, and maybe start to find out what happened to his old company.

The game is in five chapters, with six monsters to keep track of, the first of which to be seen is Poppytail. The game relies mostly on strategy, as if you do something wrong, they will kill Alex. This is one of my first games, so the game has no sound and graphic-wise isn't the best. But I hope when it is released, you will give it a go. The game will be released on GameJolt. Warning: Bad jumpscares and rage quits are almost certain.

I'll post a link here when I have the game released. Meanwhile, feel free to ask any questions about the game.

(If anything, Easter Fun should be accused of looking like FNAF. King Ted looks like Freddy and Fluoride looks like Toy Bonnie.)

1) I will no longer be releasing the first chapter. This is causing me to neglect other parts of the game that need to be completed, and I think it's just easier to make the full game before releasing it. I have been working on this game for too long, and I don't want to keep getting stuck for months creating a game that does not need to take that amount of time. I am not making this game full-time, so I need to start focusing on getting the full thing done rather than focusing on refining one chapter. That can come later in development.

2) My friend JackAttackGames will be sending me the models for the Shyyon and Vehicle Dummy characters soon. Currently, it's just after 6pm on Monday in New South Wales (at the time of writing), and I am aiming to have the second chapter done and working by the end of the weekend.

3) I now have another laptop that isn't slow and doesn't have full storage. I'm not sure if I've talked much about the laptop fiasco, but my original laptop I had been making games on mysteriously got full storage and behaved in weird ways such as losing 2-3MB of storage per second, gaining 2-3MB storage per second, and half of its storage was being taken up by what seems to be nothing. I have let an IT expert have a look at my laptop and even he has no idea what's wrong with it. That laptop was two and a half years old, so I switched to another laptop that was only 12 months old and had 1TB of storage, but it was extremely slow and it could take nearly half an hour just to log on, and Google Chrome would crash the first time you opened it after logging on. I now have a new laptop that I'll be developing on that doesn't have any of these issues now!

I can't believe I haven't posted here for nearly two weeks! Anyway, I'm working on Chapter 2. Art is done, now I just need to program the characters, create the sound effects for Shyyon and Vehicle Dummy, and to ask my voice actors to voice act for the new characters.

Also, the recording for Chapter 1 was a (kind of) familiar character: Walter Turnbull. Chapter 2's recording is going to be by Alice (the character trapped in the metal suit from all of the previous games).

Yesterday, I had my first working version of Chapter 2. As with the first version of any game or section of a game, there were bound to be bugs.

When I started testing, I was able to play the game fine until I got killed. Every single time I played after that, even though I was playing Chapter 1, Vehicle Dummy would appear after 1 second, block out any noise from Walter Turnbull's recording or other characters (except for a beeping noise coming from APPARITION's countdown timer). Vehicle Dummy would play the correct death animation, however I would just be stuck in place infinitely because I wouldn't get moved to the death scene. I would be stuck infinitely, unable to move somewhere else or turn around, until APPARITION showed up and killed me (and VD would just vanish).

I fixed this and also realised there was a possibility Shyyon could create the death loop. This was because the animations are programmed to loop until their final frame which I input as a number. I placed the number of frames of the animation in the code that required the end frame, which was the number of frames minus 1. Because the frame I specified would never occur, the animation looped infinitely, while keeping me trapped and unable to escape (however, that part is intended so I couldn't run away during the animation).

After I fixed this, VD could kill me and take me to the death scene, but she was still able to teleport out of nowhere and kill me. IN THE ONLY CHAPTER IN WHICH SHE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE THERE! After playing around with the order of blocks in her code, it finally fixed itself. This bug was escapable, however, provided you run for your life as soon as the scene loads and completely avoid the entire right side of the map (in VD's path), Your Room (VD's destination when driving around the map), and the tunnel system (which always brings you back to Your Room).

I have not beaten Chapter 2 yet, and for good reasons.

I suck even in the first chapter. And I'm the one who made the game in the first place.

I am only used to dealing with running away from four things. Chapter 2 gives me six.

I can only rely on the subtitle system. The audio cues are placeholders used for other characters, such as footsteps or gasping noises. Because of this, I have to rely on this to track Shyyon's movement. One of his mechanics is to not be visible when he enters your room, and he is supposed to have his own unique sound effect for this, which is not in the game yet. VD also shares this trait, so instead of a car driving, all I hear is the placeholder, so unless I completely avoid her path, she is entirely unpredictable.

I haven't gotten the voice lines for Shyyon, VD, or Alice Campbell. Note about Alice: her original voice actor was too busy with work and could not voice her. So, Claudia Boutet, the voice actor for two other characters, has taken over the role. So hopefully soon I won't have to listen to the placeholder Chapter 2 audio recording (one of the minigame themes, however this is really distracting during gameplay).

I am hoping that in two weeks I will have Chapters 2 and 3 done.

Here are some photos I have taken of some Chapter 2 gameplay:

Jawlock with Shyyon in Campbell's Office.

Shyyon distorting the player's vision before killing them in the Main Hall.

Vehicle Dummy resting in her Simulation Room. She can't kill the player while she is resting.

Shyyon standing in the North Room, looking at the player.

The models of Shyyon and Vehicle Dummy were created by Jack Herbert in Blender. I have edited the images and I also was the one who 3D modelled Vehicle Dummy's car.

More bugs:- Loading screen never loads scene.FIXED: Apparently I can't place a "switch to scene" block in a Creating event.- Shyyon's subtitle for when he is supposed to say "I'm scared..." stays on screen for the whole chapter without disappearing or stacking.FIXED: The "insert in list" block occurs at the same time it is removed, giving off the illusion that the subtitle is never removed.- The "W" key shortcut for going through doors teleports the player to the Simulation Room from the East Room; as if the Right Hall doesn't exist.- The W shortcut key also teleports the player from the West Room to Turnbull's Office.

I can't believe I haven't posted in so long! I really need to focus on getting this game done! Chapter 4 models have been made, I did some character voice acting for an audio recording character and Cinder and someone else did character voice acting for Vehicle Dummy.

My goals have been finish and release Poppytail 5 and Pixeltail by the end of this year, but every day I don't work on these means less time I have to finish these.

I am hoping to complete Poppytail 5 by at least September. My original plan was to release Pixeltail in October, but I'm hoping for a December release due to delays. It's more than just copying and pasting code and adding new art for Pixeltail. Many things have to be added and old things reworked to fix old bugs and make improvements.

News:1) I may have found a way for the Chapter 3 & 4 enemies to work. If I cannot get this close to working, I may scrap the whole mechanic. It's already hard enough to explain the character mechanics, so I may have to think of something else if I want to actually finish the game.2) In case I haven't already mentioned, I have made the models for the two new Chapter 4 enemies (G'day Gecko and Skelisa) and one for one of the new Chapter 5 enemies (Binary). I am working on the other new Chapter 5 enemy model as I am writing this.3) I found an old list I had made with all of the planned character mechanics for Pixeltail. I had done everyone from the first two games, and everyone from the third with the exception of Auto and Abe. I finished the list so now I have final character mechanics for all 52 enemies.4) I may restart on Pixeltail because if I have a project on pause for too long, usually I have no idea what I'm doing if I attempt to continue, so I might as well try and restart (mostly) from scratch. I say mostly because there are some things that I have already finished that I don't want to get rid of.

I'm thinking if I'm going to restart development on Pixeltail, I won’t start by re-making old levels. These games were meant to be challenging, so why not start with the actual challenges themselves? The enemies! There are 52, but a lot of them will have certain traits shared by multiple characters that form their individual mechanics, which I can make as behaviours.

For example, some characters have movement patterns based on the controls you use, like in the original games, while others may follow you around like the ghosts from AGATH. Some may try to just run and kill you, while others may rely on distracting or disorienting you instead. I think having more unique character mechanics rather than "memorise the patterns for these ones and then the rest rely on luck and how you react (I mean Beachtime Poppytail, Orangu Tan and Doughy Duck from their original games)" will provide more of a challenge and be more interesting. I have gotten a lot better at using Stencyl since I made the original four, and since some of you liked AGATTH, which was really just thrown together quickly, I think I could make Pixeltail a really great game.

Here are some mechanic ideas I had (although I won’t mention who they belong to):1) Inverting the controls when you see them2) Shaking your screen3) Charging at you but stopping every once in a while for a break4) Leaving obstacles that stun you and other enemies around the level5) Applying various shaders to distract you6) Creating a harmless but identical duplicate of themselves

I may have found a way for the Chapter 3 & 4 enemies to work. If I cannot get this close to working, I may scrap the whole mechanic. It's already hard enough to explain the character mechanics, so I may have to think of something else if I want to actually finish the game.

Here are the old and new mechanics for these characters.

OLD:Dingo Cool, Bad Bunny and Skelisa start off in an inaccessible "Beta Test Room". Cinder and G'day Gecko start off in separate prison cells. After a while, Bad Bunny will enter the room. If Skelisa is active (Chapter 4 onwards), 50% of the time she will appear after Bad Bunny. Regardless of whether Skelisa decided to appear or not, Dingo Cool will appear. Once Dingo Cool appears, the player has 10 seconds to release a prison cell. They should release Cinder if Skelisa ISN'T there, but Bad Bunny and Dingo Cool are. If ALL THREE are there, they should release G'day Gecko instead. If the player releases one prison cell character when they were supposed to release the other, the released character will attack. If the player releases someone before Dingo Cool arrives, Bad Bunny will wait by a door to Your Room and stay there until he kills you. If you release someone after the 10 second time limit, either Skelisa or Dingo Cool will wait by a door to Your Room to attack (which one waits depends on the situation). If the right character is released at the right time, everyone will go back to normal.

NEW:Chapter 3: Dingo Cool and Bad Bunny will start off in the Beta Test Room. Cinder will start off in his cell. After a while, either Dingo Cool or Bad Bunny will emerge from the room into the South Room. That character will ignore the player if they are in the South Room together. They will then proceed to Your Room, in which they will kill you after a certain period of time. Bad Bunny moves around quicker and has a faster reaction time when it comes to killing you. Dingo Cool moves around slower, but he will stay in Your Room for longer, still giving him a high chance of attacking. If either of them are in Your Room (in which a unique sound cue will play), and you enter the tunnels, Cinder will attack.

Chapter 4 and onwards: Dingo Cool, Bad Bunny and Cinder act as normal. Skelisa starts off in the Beta Test Room. G'day Gecko starts off in his cell. Now, instead of Dingo Cool or Bad Bunny emerging from the Beta Test Room, Skelisa may instead. She ignores the player if they are in the South Room together, however she won't if she is in your room. If you hear her whispering, STAY OUT OF YOUR ROOM! She will kill you instantly if you do. However, you will want to pay attention to the subtitles to make sure you aren't hearing Vehicle Dummy's whispering! You'll also want to stay out of the tunnels or the South Room if she's in Your Room. G'day Gecko is quite protective of his daughter...